Wednesday, December 31, 2008

PC idiocy in people who despise 'breeders'; i.e., people who actually reproduce instead of dying off alone.Parentitis is the well known if scarcely documented condition that transforms polite, environmentally-aware, socially co-operative adults into pushy bigots who, when they're not making innumerable short journeys in their 4x4s, are to be found at home amassing toxic nappy mountains, cooing noisily over waste matter and £500 pushchairs. So common as to be almost universal in so-called advanced civilisations, the condition is marked by a wholesale reconstruction of sensibility: what was once seen in terms of possibility is now marked as a threat.So if you have kids you can't be polite, 'environmentally-aware' or play well with others. According to this moron. While I'd agree that anyone who spent that much for a stroller is an idiot, for the rest of it? Apparently seeing things in a different light, now that you've got offspring, is a Bad Thing.

The condition seems to derive from the contemplation of the beloved infant: the eyes widen, seemingly forced apart by the outward flow of that unconditional love which, as all parents' recognise, lies at the very core of being. A wonderful thing, therefore, but for that it may come at the expense of love for everything else, drawing a blanket of equally narrowed-eyed suspicion across the larger slice of reality and dividing the world sharply between the few things known to contribute to baby's well-being and anything else does not.Ah yes, the fact that someone realizes there are things other than themselves, other lives to consider, is another Bad Thing. And this clown is now wanting to be a father. Here's one of the better things he comes up with:People often say that parents lose their ability to judge. But this is not true. Rather, their judgement quickens: an enhanced survival instinct takes over, obliterating all other levels of consideration and temporarily closing off the more advanced operations of consciousness.You see, actually considering protection of your kid from nasties keeps you from considering more 'advanced' things. Like getting rid of people, which he goes on a riff about. Including this:Altruism, of course, is said to be a uniquely human quality (there are those who deny it even to be this, of course), and there is something magnificent about the thought of an entire species simply switching itself off, without violence or force of anything other than will, to make way for something more lasting. It is unthinkable within the system of nature, unless as the conscious, involuntary corollary to a process that may be occurring anyway. But the absurdity lies not in the aim, which is in many ways laudable, but in the idea that the compassionate motivation in which it originates could possibly see the project through.A: it's not 'magnificent' to destroy yourself as a species; it's called 'losing'. It's called 'fail' in a major way. AndB: just what the hell does he consider he'd be making way for that's 'more lasting'? Spiderwebs? Birds nests?

Hell with it, he's ruining my mood. I think I've got another of those beers...

I bring you, for the first part, dhimmitude by a politician in Australia:Conservative MP Fred Nile says he wants topless bathing banned in NSW to protect Sydney's Muslim and Asian communities.

The Reverend Nile has rejected allegations that prudishness is behind a bill he has prepared to ban nudity, including topless sunbathing, on the state's most popular beaches.

Australia's reputation as a conservative but culturally inclusive sociery was at risk of erosion by more liberal overseas visitors, he said.

"Our beaches should be a place where no one is offended, whether it's their religious or cultural views," he said.Awww, the poor little muzzies just have no self-control, it seems:The practice was at risk of raising the ire of Muslim men in particular, Mr Nile said.

"I don't want to have any provocations or disturbances on our public beaches," he said.To both Mr. Nile and the poor little ever-offended muzzies: Fuck you. And the clapped-out camel you rode in on. Mr. Nile, acting to ban something that, as various people in the article say is a matter for local councils, just because you fear offending the BPMs is a nice attitude for a dhimmi, NOT for a free people. Kiss my ass, you coward. To the Muslim Men of Ire who are among the Legion of the Perpetually Offended, piss off. You moved to a country with different customs; stop expecting the whole damn country to change to suit you.

Now, to the laughter:Hezbollah possesses a formidable arsenal of rockets and missiles that bloodied Israel during a monthlong war between them in 2006, but is constrained by its own domestic political goals and fears of Israeli retaliation.And why would they fear that?For its part, Israel has also been enhancing its army's capabilities. Israel's top commander on the border with Lebanon, Maj. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, warned in October that Israel would reply with "disproportionate force" if Hezbollah attacks again, adding that any village used to fire missiles against the Jewish state will be destroyed.Oh, those nasty Jews, actually saying "We'll defend our land."HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Hehehehe, snork. Hezbollah is forced to suffer an attack of good sense because the mean ol' Jews won't just sit there this time and suffer. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAAAA!I shall now, still chuckling, see about that steak. No, I do not plan to hit any parties tonight; being in the middle of a crowd intent on getting drunk and stupid just doesn't have a whole lot of attraction to me, so I'll be at home. Considering the world, possibly loading some ammo, staying warm and comfortable. A Happy New Year to you all

since it's cold outside and raking leaves yesterday is taking revenge; apparently the dust is making a sneak attack on my respiratory system.

Section 8 housing and crime all too often go hand-in-hand. Back story: years ago I lived in a nice neighborhood in northwest OKC. A apartment complex about 2-3 blocks away started accepting Sec. 8 tenants, and within a few months you could not leave anything outside unless it was locked down or guarded. It continued until the owner, the place having been trashed, sold it. The new owner dumped the Sec. 8, cleaned it up, and the neighborhood fairly quickly returned to a better state.

PC Idiocy at its best. On a university, unsurprisingly. As a commenter says, "You used extremely poor judgment by insisting on openly reading the book related to a historically and racially abhorrent subject in the presence of your black co-workers."

Jesus wept. He was "openly reading" the book. Not just reading it, but reading it flagrantly.

Hamas and the jihadis like murdering women and children; honorable men, like these Marines, stop them. Keep their families in your prayers if you're a praying type; I don't think these two need good words with God.

Mayor BombastBloomberg really is an arrogant little socialist, isn't he?"If there's anybody who understands the pain and suffering of having the press criticize how you speak, it is me," he added.Jeez.

Ok, so Bush can read, but he doesn't read the right stuff. You know, the books that say the war is a failure and so forth, so the other books don't really count.It is awfully late in the day for Rove -- and, presumably, Bush -- to assert the president's intellectual bona fides. Now feeling the hot breath of history, they are dropping the good ol' boy persona and picking up the ol' bifocals one.I've read accounts from travelers in the Wild West of cowboys reading a newspaper until it fell apart; when they ran out of papers or books, they'd read the labels on canned goods. There are stories of the man in a cattle crew who could read and had a book or two reading it at night to those not at work. I guess since they probably wouldn't have had much patience for defeatist crap, their reading wouldn't have counted either.

And of COURSE some jackass is playing the race card for the Senate seat The Obama used to plant his ass in. We already had a bunch of 'community activists' and 'community organizers' insisting the seat HAD to be filled by a black; now this blackmailer is openly threatening people if such does not happen. 'Content of their character' doesn't count with these bigots.

In think it was Ben Franklin who said "Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy." He probably wasn't thinking of it as marinade, but I think I'm going to share a bottle of Dad's home brew with a steak for dinner tonight.

because"That proposal contained no guarantees of any kind that Hamas will stop the rockets and smuggling," Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said. "It is not realistic to expect Israel to cease fire unilaterally with no mechanism to enforce the cessation of shooting and terror from Hamas." ...

"There's no such thing as a 'humanitarian cease-fire'," an Olmert aide said Tuesday. "Gaza is not undergoing a humanitarian crisis. We're constantly supplying it with food and medications, and there's no need for a humanitarian cease-fire."Good. Tell everyone demanding a 'humanitarian truce' that you'll hear their words when they actually demand Hamas stop trying to destroy Israel and kill all the Jews. Until then, weapons free.

Here's a fine demonstration of Hamas demanding "Don't let them hit us back!":A Hamas spokesman said militants wouldn't halt their rocket and mortar fire until Israel ended its blockade. "If they halt the aggression and the blockade, then Hamas will study these suggestions," Mushir Masri said.I would suggest it were best if Masri studied a rocket just before it impacts in his office. Or a bullet just before it bisects his head. Oh, those poor, wonderful palisimians:The Shin Bet head added that many of Hamas's senior activists were hiding out in mosques and hospitals in Gaza, some of them in the guise of doctors and male nurses.Hey, isn't hiding in places of worship and hospitals considered violations of that precious international law? Think the morons like Code Pink and the UN will actually criticize them for that?

I didn't think so.

Speaking of absolute freakin' morons and communists, if you haven't read the account by Idiot McKinney claiming the Israeli Navy 'rammed' her little propaganda boat, you ought to take a look. If that jackass hasn't figured it out, if the Israelis had 'rammed' her boat she'd have been swimming to shore. Assuming the sharks have better taste than to eat her rancid carcass. And I'd be real curious as to what a serious search of her 'relief' cargo might turn up. Maybe nothing bad, but all things considered...

Speaking of the 'moral equivalence' fools, read this.The rockets are designed exclusively to maximize civilian deaths, and some have barely missed schoolyards, kindergartens, hospitals, and school buses. But others hit their targets, killing more than a dozen civilians since 2001, including in February 2008 a father of four who had been studying at the local university. These anticivilian rockets have also injured and traumatized countless children.

The residents of Sderot were demanding that their nation take action to protect them. But Israel's postoccupation military options were limited, since Hamas deliberately fires its deadly rockets from densely populated urban areas, and the Israeli army has a strict policy of trying to avoid civilian casualties.

The firing of rockets at civilians from densely populated civilian areas is the newest tactic in the war between terrorists who love death and democracies that love life. The terrorists have learned how to exploit the morality of democracies against those who do not want to kill civilians, even enemy civilians. To borrow from Jeff Cooper, the cycle of violence should involve Israel taking out Hamas by every means possible until they're completely and openly trashed.

Oh, and someone doesn't like videos from the Israelis beingviewed. Which is a good reason to look at them if you've got a faster connection than I.

And anybody who thinks you can deal in good faith with these jihadi dirtbags should look to Pakistan. Who needs to tell India "We know you're not going to invade, so if you'll excuse us, we need to send our troops to deal with this matter."

writes this:One of the major lessons of the year is that unregulated and underregulated capitalism ends up confronting democratic governments with a subprime choice: Either let a major institution go down and watch as chaos follows (the Lehman option) or funnel gobs of the public's money into such institutions to avoid such Lehman-like chaos.and this:But, just as Lincoln predicted, the United States was bound to have one labor system prevail, and the debate over the General Motors and Chrysler bailout was really a debate over which system -- the United Auto Workers' or the foreign transplant factories' -- that would be. Where the parallel between periods breaks down, of course, is in partisan alignment. Today's congressional Republicans are hardly Lincoln's heirs. If anything, they are descendants of Jefferson Davis's Confederates.Comparing Toyota and Honda in their southern factories to slave owners is so idiotic I'm surprised he had the nerve to write it. I mean, come on, dumbass, do you have any real idea...

But that first part, now, that takes the cake. Let's see, it was Bush, in his first term, who said "We've got to fix Fannie and Freddie before they implode", and it was some of those wonderful people Meyerson seems to like, like Fannie Mae Frank and Countrywide Dodd who had fits and accused Bush & Co. of racism and insisted there was no problem, no more regulation needed. This in a system that pushed companies to give loans to people they shouldn't(not exactly a free-market approach) and pushed for more and more until it imploded. And it's those same people who absolutely insisted we had to do a bailout RIGHT NOW, and now we need more bailouts and bullcrap RIGHT NOW. Instead of said people being thrown out of the House and Senate and prosecuted, and getting their theiving hands out of the mess.

Blaming Bush? Like I told my daughter a couple of years ago when discussing BDS, he's done some things he should legitimately be yelled at for; don't make up bullshit. And, I'll add, don't blame 'the markets' and 'insufficient regulation' when neither a free market nor 'sufficient' regulation was allowed.

Monday, December 29, 2008

looks like they're trying out some new boomers:The Israel Air Force used a new bunker-buster missile that it received recently from the United States in strikes against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, The Jerusalem Post learned on Sunday.

The missile, called GBU-39, was developed in recent years by the US as a small-diameter bomb for low-cost, high-precision and low collateral damage strikes[...]

Someone pointed out that the Israelis massing armor on the border just during/after the initial air strikes may have been specifically to get Hamas & Buttmonkeys Inc. to go running to their bunkers and fighting positions along the border, just so further use could be made of things like these to, ah, reduce the odds? speed more along to their 72 raisins? Whatever. The Israelis have very good intelligence and scouts, and I'd think there are maps with lots of very precise markings for the aforementioned bunkers & such; which means you give the ratbaggers time to get to them, and then...

On Tuesday Hamas legislators marked the Christmas season by passing a Sharia criminal code for the Palestinian Authority. Among other things, the code legalizes crucifixion....Hamas’s endorsement of nailing enemies of Islam to crosses came at the same time as it renewed its jihad. Here too, Hamas wanted to make sure that Christians didn’t get neglected as its fighters launched missiles at Jewish day care centers and schools. So on Wednesday Hamas lobbed a mortar at Erez crossing point into Israel just as a group of Gazan Christians were standing on line waiting to travel to Bethlehem for Christmas.

These kidnappers and murderers, these miserable offspring of a distempered sheep and a rabid dog, just keep doing this crap. Over and over. And, proving that you can't fix stupid, people who'll be among the first targets of the pork fornicators make excuses for them. And support them. Remember 'Queers for Palestine'? Hey you morons, you know what Hamas's bosses in Iran do to homosexuals? They put a noose around their neck and use a crane to lift them up; no drop and a broken neck, they hang there and slowly strangle.

Can someone actually explain to me how these fools can give support to people who want to torture them to death?

child-murdering fornicators of swine.The video shows an SUV slowly weaving through sand bag barriers at a military checkpoint just as a line of school children, most wearing white caps, comes into view. They walk along a pathway between the street and a wall, several of them pausing for a few seconds in a group before moving forward again. The vehicle moves toward the security camera while the children walk in the opposite direction, nearly passing the SUV when the footage ends in a fiery blast.Miserable, chickenshit bleeps. They admit blame for this, and refer to the effing sorry excuse for a man who carried out this mass murder as a 'taliban fighter', instead of calling him the dirtbag he is.

Countrywides, since he seems to have been international:Seems that the problem with Dodd was not that he got a few points shaved from his fees by Countrywide, but rather that he got a no-doc loan for his retirement house in Ireland. Seems it might be a wee illegal to do so, particularly if the loan was a Fannie and/or Freddie secured one, or how it was booked, or any millions of reasons why a federally insured loan shouldn’t be given to a home under foreign jurisdiction. I hear that the Senator bought the house through a front company, and disposed of it in the same manner when the Countrywide thing went down, indicating, at least as the cop shows say, bad intent.But, last I heard, he still says there's 'no reason' to worry about the documents he won't release, so I guess we shouldn't worry about it.

hit us back", and the usual suspects are whining along with them. With no damn good reason. Hamas & Co. are the murdering, lying bastards who, under cover of a 'truce' have been dropping rockets and mortars into Israel, on and on. They call for the murder of all Jews but especially those nasty ones in Israel who've dared to both stay alive and kick the ass of everyone who's attacked them. They kidnap and rape and murder, they murder children in their beds, they set up their launchers among 'civilians' specifically to keep the Israelis from striking back or, if the do strike, to cause lots of 'civilian' casualties to parade before cameras and cry about the evil Joooos.

Well, as the man says, "You might as well appeal against the thunderstorm as against these terrible hardships of war." They've started this; for that matter, it appears that the bastards are trying to make the death toll worse. I guess they want some more bodies to parade around.

You know, the way the media tends to report this reminds me of how they treat violence in schools: some kid gets beaten to death by gang-bangers or stabbed in the hall or bathroom, local news; but some kids brings an unloaded gun in and it's statewide news at least, and will likely get national mention. Hamas & Co. violate the truce damn near daily and murder women and kids, occasional mention; the nasty JOOOOS actually strike back and "How can the world tolerate these actions?"

A link at the Yankee's place led to this at Belmont. I'm going to excerpt parts of two of Wretchard's comments, read the whole comment there:#13: I think the diplomats are playing a dangerous game. The only thing that keeps the situation in the Middle East stable is Israeli restraint. But that’s the stability of a spinning plate in a juggler’s hands; not that of a concrete block sitting foursquare on the floor. The danger is the diplomats may come to regard Israeli restraint as a foundation on which to build their diplomatic fantasies. They will keep handing the juggler one more plate, one more ball, one more champagne glass to spin at the end of a stick. Give back the Golan Heights; let the Arabs have part of Jerusalem; ignore the rocket attacks from Gaza. Today there are no more enemies. Only Partners for Peace.

and #50: Maybe the root of this conflict isn’t “land” or “statehood” or even religion. Maybe its about preserving fighting and terrorism as a way of life; as a business. Palestine is an alibi for anything, but mostly it is the justification for a mode of employment, a whole series of professions, a whole raft of contractors, a self-sustaining funding network that could not exist without continuous and never-ending war. This monster has already consumed the Palestinians; stolen their future, made a mockery of their hopes.Oh, and be sure to take in comment #47 from some moron going by 'zipzap'; did you know we lost in Iraq, and only diplomacy can 'fix' terrorism?

Sunday, December 28, 2008

"I don't like guns, nobody should have one, they should be banned." Once again, a terrible crime happens, and the attitude is largely to blame objects. Never mind all the laws already there, as Kevin says, "We've got to do it again, only more so!"Susan: The police should be able to, they see this guy standing in the street and they you know, looking at whatever, they should be able to frisk them and if they have a gun, that gun should be removed and they should go to jail.Yeah, warrantless searches, total loss of- in this country- our 4th Amendment rights, that'll work great. Just like it's working so well in Britain- er, well, it's not, but everybody feels like they're doing something, so...

Here's a considerably more in-depth report than my quicky 'seal the knives in a vacuum bag' one. As a side note, when Australia went all GFW a few years back, one of the Territories didn't have registration for a lot of newly-banned guns; a guy reported that for a while there you couldn't find any 6" PVC pipe, it all having been put to use by people who didn't like being robbed by the nannies and socialists.

thing is we get to read things like the near-toxic level of snark Tam can put out. I'll add that, when someone like Breda notes another GFW celebritute opening their mouth(I'm over the image of a woman with a gun. I'm over the issue of anybody with a gun. I have evolved."), we get comments like "I didn't know "Retard" was in the human evolutionary chain." from Og.

Saturday, December 27, 2008

and animals anymore:National Geographic Channel ran a show last night entitled, "Guns In America." According to the program, there are millions of misguidedgun owners across the nation. Why? Because your guns are supposedly more likely to harm you than to help you in an emergency.

"As a society, we're totally out of control with weapons," said one Philadelphia cop who was interviewed during the show. "You need to limit access that people have to these type of firearms."

I've got family that used to contribute to them when they could; after this, I'll try to make sure they never do again.

Eventually the two men left the back door and returned to the front of the house. Peeples opened the back door to take a look around; when he did, Egypt ran out. Normally, she’d stop at the backyard gate, he said, but the men had left the gate’s door open. With nothing to stop her, Egypt went running down the driveway and Peeples went after her. He heard gunshots and saw two men with guns drawn.

Wounded, Egypt ran to the backyard. The men pulled out their badges, told Peeples they were undercover narcotics agents, handcuffed him and told him he was being charged with assault with a deadly weapon. A police cruiser pulled up, and Peeples was stuffed in the back. “Charge him with everything you can charge him with,” he remembers one of the officers saying.And I can just about guarantee these clowns will, at some point, be bitching about how people don't like them and don't trust them.Though the assault charge against Peeples was dropped, Muñoz said police have filed misdemeanor charges against him with the San Diego City Attorney’s office, including not having a dog license, endangering the public’s safety and possession of marijuana. A search of Peeples’ garage, OK’d by his mom, turned up a scale and a tiny amount of marijuana so old that it disintegrated upon contact.A 'scale'. No mention of what kind, intended use, nothing, just a scale. Does that mean some jackass could use my Lyman, or that little Midway electronic, to claim 'he was obviously handling drugs'? Probably; some of these sorry excuses for lawmen seem to have no limits. And something that had been there so long it 'disintegrated'? Gee, obviously fresh evidence, isn't it?It's obviously a "Well, we screwed up but God forbid we actually admit it and make it right; find something we can charge him on."

And note this Balko found:Milwaukee resident Virginia Villo is suing that city for the 2004 police shooting of her lab-springer spaniel mix, Bubba. As part of her lawsuit, she requested police reports of every dog killed by Milwaukee police over a nine-year period. The request turned up 434 dead puppy reports, or about one every seven-and-a-half days.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

For instance, after The Obama's investigator(Comes with the Royal Seal!) investigated and said nobody on The Obama's staff did anything wrong, we still keep reading things like this:In addition to talking with Gov. Blagojevich about who would fill President-elect Barack Obama’s Senate seat, Obama’s newly minted chief of staff had something else on his mind: his own congressional seat.

Just after accepting the top post with Obama, Rahm Emanuel discussed with Blagojevich the possibility of keeping his congressional seat “warm” for him for a couple of years, the Sun-Times has learned.

Emanuel expressed interest in returning one day to his elected position because he was on track to become U.S. House speaker, the Sun-Times previously reported.Hmmm, I wonder if this last could have something to do with Pelosi basically telling him and The Obama to clear any talking to people in the House through her? "No surprises" I believe it was?

Here's what a 'journalist' has to say about Joe the Plumber being trashed:WURZELBACHER: I just, you know, in general you can say the left pretty much shot me up, wouldn't you say?

ROBERTS: Well, I mean, you know, I guess when you entered the political fray, you've got to expect that some people are going to take some shots at you, you know, when you get out there and you enter into that political arena. It's a tough place to be. It's a little bit like a gladiator sport --Let us point out- again- that this guy was in HIS YARD when The Obama came by and asked for questions. He asked a question, The Anointed One's answer caused a problem, and the media- and crooked officials- proceeded to trash him in every way they could. They spent more time investigating a guy who asked a question than they did on Obama over the previous two years(that they'd admit to, anyway). But, according to this clown Roberts, asking Obama a question means you've 'entered the political arena'.

Dr Blackmore said the "fundamental problem" facing the planet today is that "there are too many people". Professor Gray agreed. Then Dr Blackmore declared: "For the planet's sake, I hope we have bird flu or some other thing that will reduce the population, because otherwise we're doomed."What's scarier than these morons? That there's a fair chance Obama's science adviser agrees with them.

These folks say that the primary reason for failures with the M4/M16 is incorrect/insufficient maintenance. Never having owned one, and having fired an AR15 on one occasion, I can only repeat what the son said a while back when I mentioned maybe getting an AR15: "If you can find one with a closed gas system in 7.62x39, grab it; otherwise, don't bother." Considering finding one with a closed system in .223 is both damn near impossible and very expensive last time I looked, I think I'll pass.

That's enough of that. I'm going to try to get in a festive mood, and have a talk with Security Staff so that, if Santa falls into the back yard, she won't bite his red-clad ass. He sets foot here, he's after my rawhide; I'll bite him GOOD.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

There is an ugly rumor circulating about a MySpace page and Senator Obama’s presidential candidacy. The rumor states you professed on your MySpace page to purchase an AK47 if Senator Obama was elected president. I believe in neither assuming nor accepting “rumors”. Therefore, I am approaching you because I feel we have a good working relationship.

Susan, my coworker doesn't know me very well. I'd never own a commie gun, and I haven't used MySpace in a few years. What I did say was said on facebook, and what I said was "Zero is celebrating Obama's victory by purchasing an assault rifle." It's nice to know that Susan and I have a good working relationship, because she's going to try damn hard to destroy it. Now watch as Susan goes ahead and assumes the rumor as true:

Go read. And marvel at the level of bigotry and misreading and general dumbass in the message.

not by much, but above- and that's good not only for the general 'not as cold' reason, but it started raining lightly, off & on. So instead of ice we've just got damp places. And it's supposed to stay above freezing through the night(just) so shouldn't have to deal with any ice the next couple of days.

Which means not only do I not have to worry about getting around, I don't have to worry aboutGetting stuck on a hill because somebody in front decided to slow down as they started up;Getting run into because "I didn't know I'd slide that far!"Watching people slide on the hill out front and wondering if one of them is going to slide into the driveway and hit something.At times, I think it should be legal to have a 20mm cannon mounted on the top of the truck, just to deal with the morons who think they can defy the laws of physics because"I have snow tires.""I have four-wheel-drive.""I'm in a hurry.""I know how to drive on this." This last from people who, if they actually did know how, would either not be on the damn road, or would be travelling at much lower speed.

Son did make it home on leave, and is currently with his wife(who also has leave) and at her family's house. Along with her four sisters, brother & wife, and assorted husbands, nieces and nephews(I quote: "It's gonna be crowded.") She got in from field maneuvers just before her leave started, so it's a nice break along with the holiday.

I was conversing with Og the other day, and mentioned that it's odd; he's 24, widely-experienced(including in some things I could wish he'd missed), married, but at times I can still see the kid who stabbed about a hundred holes in my heavy bag("I was practicing like you!" "BUT, I don't use a real knife, dammit!"), or the kid with a lapful of cat when the cat was almost bigger than he was.

Just to make things fun, I had to run out the 30's with winds gusting to 30, and the engine started running rough and the 'check engine' light came on. Went to an AutoZone and ran the codes, it showed a miss on one cylinder("Possible bad plug, wire, or vacuum leak"). But partway to the store it smoothed out and ran perfectly. So I cleared the error codes and put in a bottle of fuel system cleaner, and so far it's running fine. I'm hoping it stays that way; putting it in the shop(if not a plug or wire) is one thing in decent weather; I do NOT like riding a motorcycle when it's 30-35F and occasionally spitting rain, and I've got to get to work & back. At least I won't be using the Federally-Approved Transport shown below(courtesy of Theo):Among other things, there's no stable at work.

around, it's necessary to make note of what a liar and dirtbag he is:Ayers would like to claim he participated in non-violent protests. But he omits the fact he helped organize and participated in the 1969 “Days of Rage,” which left innocents and police officers hospitalized and one man permanently crippled, a maiming his fellow Weathermen mocked with the crude lyrics of “Lay Elrod Lay.” One of the participants in the violence noted that the thugs armed themselves with “steel pipes and slingshots, chains, clubs, mace, and rolls of pennies to add weight to a punch.” The participant quoted was Bill Ayers describing the event he helped create in his own book, Fugitive Days.And the attempts to blow up various police offices, and the plan to kill as many as possible at Fort Dix, and so on.

like NYEffin'C- are so screwed up, we have this sterling member of the city council who's now heading for the state Senate:State Sen.-elect Hiram Monserrate flew into a volcanic rage and attacked his girlfriend after seeing another man's business card in her purse, sources told The Post yesterday.

The law-enforcement sources also believe that the jealous Monserrate was so angry that he deliberately broke a glass into jagged pieces so he could slash Karla Giraldo, who required 20 stitches around her left eye following the alleged domestic-violence assault.

Let's, see, violent and, from the links to other articles, dirty. And you probably wouldn't be surprised to read this:Meanwhile, it was revealed that a top aide to Senate Democratic Leader Malcolm Smith showed up at the police station to offer assistance to Monserrate, a fellow Democrat, on the morning he was busted.

Smith's office confirmed that Chief of Staff Mortimer Lawrence - a former Queens assistant DA - went to the 105th Precinct station house in Queens Village to help Monserrate, but insisted Smith did not direct him to do so.Oh, of COURSE not. Pardon my disbelief.

Shouldn't really be a surprise, I guess. I mean, look what Barack I Settled The Science Obama has appointed as his science advisor:Dr. Holdren began his critique by complaining that Dr. Lomborg was “asking the wrong question” because environmentalists had known for decades that there was no danger of energy being in short supply. This struck me as as odd bit of revisionist history, given both the “energy crisis” rhetoric of the 1970s and Dr. Holdren’s own bet that resources would become more scarce. Then, in the rest of the critique, Dr. Holdren faulted Dr. Lomborg for not paying enough attention to the reasons that there could be future problems with energy supplies.And The Obama wants to bankrupt coal. Any surprise he'd pick someone like this?

Give your legislators hell the next couple of years, that'll probably be the only thing that saves us.

to another Kennedy has a couple of things I'd argue with*, but some good information. Including this:Still, these yelps are not likely to stop the Kennedy juggernaut. The forces behind Caroline – like moneybags Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Wall Street bagman-in-chief Sen. Charles Schumer – are too powerful and well-heeled to be resisted. The word is out that dissenting on Kennedy could result in loss of the kind of largesse that can make or break political careers.In plain language: "You cause us problems on our annointing her Senator, you don't get as much of other people's money as you want." Which, so far as I'm concerned, shows these bastards to be corrupt little tyrants. Who also can't stand the thought of someone who might not bend their way being put in that seat, because insecure little nanny-state boobs can't stand the idea of opposition.

*A series of strong Republican politicians since Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan lured many middle-income voters out of the Democratic Party by appealing to their patriotism, economic self-interest and, in some cases, prejudices.I'd imagine they're hinting that opposition to amnesty for illegals counts as 'prejudice', but at least they keep the name-calling to a minimum.

Monday, December 22, 2008

sucks.Former United States President Jimmy Carter reported that he advised Syrian-based Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal on what price to demand from Israel for the release of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, who was abducted more than two years ago. He said that Hamas is “relatively satisfied with the status quo.”

Carter’s visit to Lebanon and Syria earlier this month follows a trip to Damascus several months ago in the face of American policy against establishing direct contact with the outlawed terrorist organization.

I, for one, am not in the least shocked by the revelation that Caroline Kennedy is "interested" in being anointed with her Uncle Bobby's Senate seat. The seat currently being snailtrailed by Hillary Clinton. Although oft-lauded as one of the very few non-retarded members of her generation of the Kennedy Klan, I find her tethered senses of noblesse oblige, hubris, and condescension simultaneously predictable and disheartening.

Joe Biden proves once again that 'teaching constitutional law' doesn't mean he knows his ass from a hole in the ground. That's on top of trying to make that Senate seat a family possession, which for that alone he should have his ass kicked to the curb.

Awww, some people in Harlem don't seem to mind Rangel being a crook on taxes and fundraising, but having all those rent-stabilized apartments, now THAT bothers them. Apparently the fact that some whites are moving into Harlem is a real threat, too. Lesson to be learned: you basically allow someone to become Representative For Life, don't be surprised when they crap on you; why shouldn't they, when they know they'll get away with it?

Looks like the People's Republic of California Supremes have decided that if you come to someone's rescue, and they think you hurt them, you can be sued. No, I don't want some moron nearly killing me fumbling around; neither do I want someone leaving me to die because they're afraid of being taken to court.

Looks like some of the Youths Of No Identifying Characteristics have spread to Sweden, taking their joyous customs of rioting and burning things with them. I need to find out more about this particular one, especially considering this:Clashes in the Malmo suburb Rosengard have escalated after the police in the beginning of the week cleared out and closed a basement facility in a rental building that was occupied after a dispute between the real estate owner and the Islamic cultural society in the neighborhood, local media reported.Sinc 'occupied' generally means 'taken over by people who think it's owed them' or 'taken over by people who think it's their due to take over', that gives some hints about what's going on. So does this:The fire department considered the area to be too risky to enter with their personnel.Damn, where have we heard that before? Generally means either gangs or islamist nutters. Ok, Gates of Vienna has this:The background is,They had a mosque in this islamic centre, on a lease.landlord decided not to renew it when it expired.So rightfully it no longer belongs to the former owners.Muslims claim it is now holy land and ground belonging to islam”Police have to be brought in to close it down.All hell breaks loose.That would explain it. Hell, one of Osama's big gripes was that Spain was no longer al Andalusia, when it should still belong to islam; so no surprise that the nutter types would think 'once a mosque, it always belongs to us'. Which should do wonders for anyone trying to rent space for muslim use in the future.

I've got things to do, and since it's in the mid-teens outside I think I'll get them done quickly. You'll have to amuse yourselves in my absence.

Sunday, December 21, 2008

like the crap outlined here. The family is rich because of bootlegging. Ted Kennedy is a woman-abusing drunk hypocrite, just like the rest of the family in politics("The rich don't pay their fair share(but ignore my tax shelters), we must have alternative energy sources(but not where they spoil my view), guns are bad!(but don't talk about my armed guards) and so on). We've got this female basically demanding she be given a seat in the Senate because of her family name and money, and people you usually think of as intelligent(Koch for instance) are acting like worshipers trying to bring on another Ascension.

This isn't a damned monarchy, but an awful lot of people seem to want it go be. Friggin' Biden trying to hand a Senate seat to his son, and so forth. And I'm sick to death of it, and of every jackass who thinks it's a good idea.

The newly unearthed diaries of a colourful assassin for the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA, reveal that American spy chiefs wanted Patton dead because he was threatening to expose allied collusion with the Russians that cost American lives.

"Can you use it when trouble happens" goes for countries, too.It raises questions about the stamina of our nation and the resolve of our political class. It is an uncomfortable conclusion that Britain, with nuclear weapons, cruise missiles, aircraft carriers and the latest generation of fighter-bombers, is incapable of securing a medium-size conurbation. Making Basra safe was an essential part of the overall strategy; having committed ourselves to our allies we let them down.I'll add, as he does, that the average British troop is just as tough and capable as every; but if you muzzle the sheepdogs and keep them on a short leash, they can't do much about the predators.

Saturday, December 20, 2008

The homeowner said when police went into the garage she heard three shots. The homeowner said an officer told her they shot the dog and the dog ran off.

The 2-year-old Dalmatian was found the Wednesday morning at a neighbor's home.

Officer said they were looking for a material witness in a gang member's trial, but they entered the wrong home. Police entered 1468B, instead of 1468A.

Officers said the dog charged and the officer felt he was in imminent danger and shot the dog.Oh, of COURSE he was. I mean, just because he went to the wrong damn house and the dog acted in defense of his territory. Where(see 'wrong home' above) they had no bleeping business being.

What is so damned hard about looking at the bloody address BEFORE you start kicking doors? The investigators intended to serve the search warrant at a home on Valley Spring Drive in Lawrenceville about 9:15 a.m. One of the investigators mistakenly pointed out another house nearby.

Once the officers forced entry to the house, they briefly detained a male and female resident before determining they were in the wrong place.

The search was immediately halted and no intrusive search was ever executed, said police spokeswoman Cpl. Illana Spellman. A supervisor came to the scene to further explain the situation and apologize to the residents.

The department also is paying to repair their front door, Spellman said.

And, remember the jackasses who shot the two labs in the bad raid? Including the one that hid and they chased down to kill? Well, their department(of course) says they did no wrong: The Prince George's County Sheriff's Office has concluded in an internal review that its deputies were justified when they shot and killed two dogs belonging to the mayor of Berwyn Heights during a July drug raid, Sheriff Michael Jackson said yesterday. ...

A sheriff's department SWAT team and county police narcotics officers burst into the mayor's home July 29 after police intercepted a 32-pound package of marijuana addressed to Trinity Tomsic, Calvo's wife.

Police cleared Calvo and Tomsic of wrongdoing, saying they were victims of a drug smuggling scheme in which drug-filled packages addressed to unsuspecting recipients were intercepted by a FedEx deliveryman.

we have this stirling example from the Galveston PD:As Dymond headed toward the breaker, a blue van drove up and three men jumped out rushing toward her. One of them grabbed her saying, "You're a prostitute. You're coming with me."

Dymond grabbed onto a tree and started screaming, "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy." One of the men covered her mouth. Two of the men beat her about the face and throat.

As it turned out, the three men were plain-clothed Galveston police officers who had been called to the area regarding three white prostitutes soliciting a white man and a black drug dealer.What Thirdpower said. My daughter had screamed for help, and I saw three guys trying to drag her into a van? There'd have been dead people formerly trying to drag my daughter into a van. Dad spent a lot of time in law enforcement; if such had happened to my sister, there'd have been blood on the ground; people with no id, no anything, grabbing a girl, striking her, dragging her toward a van = kidnapping = dead kidnappers.

And, just to make it more fun, this from the shyster for the idiot excuses for lawmen:Both the daughter and the father were arrested for assaulting a peace officer. "The father basically attacked police officers as they were trying to take the daughter into custody after she ran off."

Also, "The city has investigated the matter and found that the conduct of the police officers was appropriate under the circumstances," Helfand says. "It's unfortunate that sometimes police officers have to use force against people who are using force against them. And the evidence will show that both these folks violated the law and forcefully resisted arrest."

I fully realize this is the shyster trying to defend his brainless clients. I point out again:Unmarked van.No uniforms.No badges.Three guys grab the girl, hit her, and drag her to the van.That should, at the very least, equal terminated police officers paying one hell of a settlement and possibly facing criminal charges. It should also equal the city paying one hell of a settlement for defending this bullshit.

in this? I mean, not counting the bit Uncle pointed out:Staten Island District Attorney Daniel Donovan dismissed the notion hunting rifles and shotguns are not the type of weapons authorities need to be worried about, noting they can cause harm if poorly safeguarded or stolen by burglars.

"Taking these off the streets is as important as the taking the handguns off the streets,'' he said.Of course, they're always saying "We don't want to take your hunting rifle or shotgun", but according to this DA they do. I mean, you shouldn't be allowed to own something that, if someone steals and misuses it, could hurt someone. Like cars, prescription drugs, knives...(they haven't said it yet, but I've no doubt the nannies are getting there)

No note of how many of the surrendered firearms were in working order, for instance, yet the blanket statement that 2,631 guns handed in "That's potentially more than 2,600 lives saved,". You can throw an awful lot of crap in under 'potentially'.

And, speaking of idiot politicians looking for a nice, PC way of pretending to fix a problem,"I'd like to look at gun laws, frankly. Penalties for illegal guns," said Ballard.

Ballard said he knows many will oppose the idea, and he wants to make clear what kind of guns he'd target.

"I have no problem with second amendment legal guns. No problem what so ever on that. It's the illegal guns that are concerning," said Ballard.As Codrea says, "Good grief." This is a marvelous example of a politician whoA: has no damned idea what he's talking about andB: put no real thought into this before throwing it out.God knows what he thinks 'second amendment legal' guns are.

minds.But gathering physical evidence, backed by powerful simulations on the world's most advanced computer climate models, is reshaping that view and lending strong support to the radical idea that human-induced climate change began not 200 years ago, but thousands of years ago with the onset of large-scale agriculture in Asia and extensive deforestation in Europe.

What's more, according to the same computer simulations, the cumulative effect of thousands of years of human influence on climate is preventing the world from entering a new glacial age, altering a clockwork rhythm of periodic cooling of the planet that extends back more than a million years.

"This challenges the paradigm that things began changing with the Industrial Revolution," says Stephen Vavrus, a climatologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Center for Climatic Research and the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. "If you think about even a small rate of increase over a long period of time, it becomes important."I wonder if they're still using the calculations that produced the hockey-stick graph?

And these clowns expect people to not only buy this, but to change the whole human society based on this crap. We're supposed to believe that the same people who have frequently lied about figures and facts(all to Save Us All, of course), who've used climate modeling that at times is hugely flawed and at best largely guesswork- especially when they're trying to play games with data from thousands of years ago- are going to tell us the Total Unbiased Truth now. Which, to them, is that a global human population smaller than the population of a lot of major cities somehow changed the whole global climate with farming and house-building.

Of course, The Obama- a true believer himself- has appointed as his science guy a nut who still thinks Paul Erlich was and is right. So the enviroweenies and watermelons have friends in high places, God help us all.

and attention, just not the kind they wanted:The garish white, blue and green inflatable, which can be seen from a mile away, was shot down three times by angry locals but the company had it patched up and put it back in the air....The blimp, which is 30ft long and has a 10ft diameter and costs around £2,500 to buy, has been shot down three times according to locals.

It first went up at the end of August and has been shot down by a mystery sniper three times since, once in October and twice in November.

It is not known what type of gun has been used to shoot it down.

Well, at 600 meters up, we know it wasn't a longbow. Let's see, 600 times... about 2000 feet up, pretty good shot. I wonder if they measured the grouping?

lately. Bigoted morons who've decided the southern states need a 'third Reconstruction':The alternative to the Southernization of the U.S. is the Americanization of the South — a process that was not completed by Reconstruction and the New Deal and the Civil Rights era, which can be thought of as the Second Reconstruction. The non-Southern states, through their representatives in Congress and the executive branch, and with the help of enlightened Southerners, need to use the power of the federal government to put a stop to the Southern conservative race-to-the-bottom strategy once and for all.

Yeah. A 'race to the bottom' that includes lots of tech development and people who actually work without a union controlling their every movement and populations that aren't shrinking because A: people here generally like the idea of families and kids and B: people are moving here to get away from the morons like the writer at Salon and states like the People's Republics of MA and NY. Can't have that, can we?

In the dirtbag category, we have the crapheads at Wikileaks who seem to think that revealing information like this and putting troops at increased risk counts as 'whistleblowing'. If they had said something like "There are reports that some jammers affect communications", there might be an argument for it; but what these assholes did is inexcusable, and this kind of CYA bullcrap should be treated as what it is. And I hope the morons run into some troops who've depended on these systems and said troops kick their ass.

Friday, December 19, 2008

They're saying it was 'a mistake', 'no intention of building a registration system', etc. I call bullcrap because, as Jon says,Sorry Tam, but after working with State employees for a bit now, I can say that it was intentional. No one creates a form and sends it outside the office without a) a committee, b) at least one level of supervision of that person reviewing the form. In this case, if it was the result of an audit, then the auditors or auditor’s liaison had to sign off on it too.I don't believe this just 'slipped through', etc. This was done intentionally, and now they're in CYA mode. I mean, c'mon, does anyone really think a form set up this was didn't have to be approved at least once by someone in authority?

As long as it doesn't completely obstruct the garage or house, is there such a thing as too much ammo?(I know, sneaky question; there's never too much)

And this one's for real: is it every possible to do too much to make sure men like this are not forgotten?You're lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns, and you know you're not getting out. Your family is 1/2 way around the world, 12,000 miles away, and you'll never see them again. As the world starts to fade in and out, you know this is the day.

Then, over the machine gun noise, you faintly hear that sound of a helicopter, and you look up to see an un-armed Huey, but it doesn't seem real, because no Med-evac markings are on it.

Ed Freeman is coming for you. He's not Medevac, so it's not his job, but he's flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire, after the Medevacs were ordered not to come.

they want to do it by slime:California's Democratic leaders were planning a vote today on a brazen proposal to raise gas, sales and income taxes through a series of legal maneuvers that would bypass the Legislature's minority Republicans.And you'll just love this:"I still believe in bipartisanship," Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) said at a Capitol news conference. "But there is an even greater responsibility than practicing bipartisanship, and that is to govern. And that is what we intend to do here today."Translation: "I believe in bipartisanship as long as the other side does what we want; if they won't, we'll skip around the rules because we have to tell you what to do and what you're allowed to keep of what you earn."

Speaking of Democrats and nanny-state morons,The Los Angeles City Council approved a package of gun control laws Wednesday, placing new requirements on ammunition sellers and banning the sale of military-style ammunition in the hopes of further reducing the city's gun and gang violence.

The measures ban the sale of .50-caliber ammunition, capable of penetrating a car's engine, and would require the city's ammunition vendors to be licensed, to sell ammunition face-to-face instead of over the Internet and require gun dealers to report a full accounting of their inventory twice a year to the Police Department.

The council passed laws prohibiting the installation of secret compartments for guns in cars and allowing the city to permanently seize vehicles used by certain gang members during a crime, which was proposed by City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo.Etc.Villaraigosa dismissed questions about whether the ammunition restrictions would have a practical effect since buyers could simply purchase the bullets over the Internet or in cities where the laws do not apply.

"Part of what we're doing here is leading the way," Villaraigosa said, stating that the measures are another tool to fight gun violence and that he hoped other cities and President-elect Barack Obama's administration would follow suit. "This is the most far-reaching effort of any big city in the country. . . . This isn't about symbolism; it's about results."It's both; it's a way of pretending to actually do something, and it's preening in their "We Care" halo. Won't do a damn thing to actually stop crime, but it'll screw honest people around some more.

for her actions:Helen Jones-Kelley, director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, resigned last night near the end of a monthlong, unpaid suspension for mining state computers for confidential information on "Joe the Plumber."

Two senior managers suspended for their roles in the scandal that spiced this year's presidential campaign also are leaving, The Dispatch has learned. The administration fired Doug Thompson, deputy director of child support. Fred Williams, assistant agency director, resigned effective Jan. 31.

But, of course, we're informed the real problem is"It appears she was driven out by this intense pressure on the part of the Republicans," said Senate Minority Leader Ray Miller, D-Columbus. "I think it's a tremendous loss. She's an outstanding public servant who made a mistake and was disciplined for it."She's a 'outstanding public servant' who broke regulations and laws using her position for political purposes; she should have been fired, not allowed to resign.

The paper also reported that Jones-Kelley had used her state computer and e-mail to assist the Obama campaign, providing names of potential Dayton-area contributors and helping to arrange an event for Obama's wife, Michelle.Which, as I recall, is also illegal. But she's 'outstanding', yeah.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

when he did: the effin' Chicago Tribune was about to blow it. Members of Fitzgerald’s team are livid the scheme didn’t advance, at least for a little longer, according to some people close to Fitzgerald’s office. Why? Because had the plot unfolded, they might have had an opportunity most feds can only dream of: A chance to catch the sale of a Senate seat on tape, including the sellers and the buyers.

The precise timing of Tuesday’s dramatic, pre-dawn arrest was not dictated by Fitzgerald, nor was it dictated by the pace of Blagojevich’s alleged “crime spree.” It was dictated by the Chicago Tribune, according to people close to the investigation and a careful reading of the FBI’s affidavit in the case.

At Fitzgerald’s request, the paper had been holding back a story since October detailing how a confidante of Blagojevich was cooperating with his office.

Gerould Kern, the Tribune’s editor, said in a statement last week that these requests are granted in what he called isolated instances. “In each case, we strive to make the right decision as reporters and as citizens,” he said.

But editors decided to publish the story on Friday, Dec. 5, ending the Tribune’s own cooperation deal with the prosecutor.

Insty wrote a couple of times that anyone being interviewed by some media weenie should record it themselves so when(more likely than 'if') they screwed with it to make him look bad, he could go public with proof of what they did. But the deterrent effect of that depends at least partly on the media weenies giving a damn about little things like 'right' and 'wrong'.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

a fine place itself, which pointed to this fairly NSFW site titled Why Women Hate Men. Kind of a "THAT was a stupid thing to say"-type place. For instance, in critiquing a personals ad(actually a Buy ME! ad) he touches on women's fantasies:#3 Abducted by a stranger for a night of hot, passionate, anonymous sex.

Tim's physique suggests he'd have a hard time abducting a de-clawed housecat from a freshly waxed marble floor. Slight of build and tattoo-free, Tim hardly resembles the hard-scrabble ex-cons many women favor for this fantasy. And most women conceded that being abducted by a greeting card store cashier on a 3-speed Schwinn bicycle and riding in the delivery basket to his parents house was just a wee bit of a stretch.

#2 Owning a man as a sex slave

It's hard to enslave a man who ejaculates when you take off your bra. And an 18 year-old man couldn't find his way around a vagina with GoogleMaps and a plastic Dallas Cowboys compass extracted from a box of Lucky Charms, so it's often difficult to instruct a man who has no idea what he's doing. Ask him to warm up your vulva, and he runs out to the garage to start your car. Tell him to moisten the hood, and he spits on his Michigan State sweatshirt.

#1 Mrs. Robinson / Shy, young virgin fantasy

Jackpot. All you insatiable, horny cougars just want an innocent young man to wear an undercooked bacon suit to your little wolverine party. To sip the nectar of youth from the shy, whimpering prisoner of his own innocence. You women disgust me, you're like .......... men with tits.

The Oxford Dictionary for kids is being 'updated'Oxford University Press has removed words like "aisle", "bishop", "chapel", "empire" and "monarch" from its Junior Dictionary and replaced them with words like "blog", "broadband" and "celebrity". Dozens of words related to the countryside have also been culled.

The publisher claims the changes have been made to reflect the fact that Britain is a modern, multicultural, multifaith society.

As one guy puts it, Anthony Seldon, the master of Wellington College, a leading private school in Berkshire, said: "I am stunned that words like "saint", "buttercup", "heather" and "sycamore" have all gone and I grieve it.

"I think as well as being descriptive, the Oxford Junior Dictionary, has to be prescriptive too, suggesting not just words that are used but words that should be used. It has a duty to keep these words within usage, not merely pander to an audience. We are looking at the loss of words of great beauty. I would rather have "marzipan" and "mistletoe" then "MP3 player."

Interestingly, one of the words taken out is 'bacon'. Now what could that have to do with being a 'multicultural' society, hmm?

here's one of the reasons I'd never want to live there: GFW PSH Irish-stlyeThe Government has outlined its proposals for a ban on licensing handguns, which may be expanded to include all firearms in the future.

Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern said the legislation, which will be published shortly as part of the Criminal Justice (Miscellaneous) Provisions Bill, had been drawn up in response to increasing concern over the proliferation of firearms.Note that wording, 'proliferation of firearms', it's important.“My concern is that unless strong and decisive action is taken the number of handguns could grow exponentially and our firearms regime would equate to that of countries such as the United States,” Mr Ahern said.

“While I know the vast majority of licensed gun owners behave responsibly, my paramount concern must be the protection of the public, particularly against the background of the level of gun crime which is taking place,” Mr Ahern added.Translation: "The people who've jumped through hoops to get a license don't commit crimes, but We the Government(who also need to suck up to the EUnuchs since the peasants voted 'NO') don't want them to have one. So we'll use this as an excuse."

This is the P14. Originally conceived to use an experimental .276 cartridge and replace the #1 MkIII Enfield as the British battle rifle. In many ways it’s a Mauser: two opposed locking lugs up front, bolt release and ejector combined on the left, five round internal magazine. It also had the one real upgrade(other than the cartridge if that’d worked out) over the #1 that was needed*: an aperture rear sight and a front blade protected by ears.

Short history: WWI came along and the Brits didn’t have time to work out the bugs in the cartridge, and needed a LOT more rifles than they could make, so contracts wound up being let with three American companies(Winchester, Remington and Eddystone) to make them in .303. Then we got into the war, and Springfield Arsenal could not turn out enough 1903 rifles to arm the troops. Someone took a look at the P14 and figured they could bore the barrel for .30-06 instead of .303 and modify the bolt face for the rimless cartridge and we could use it. It worked, and a lot of troops carried this(as the US Rifle Model 1917) into battle. The Brits wound up mostly using the #1 MkIII, although some P14s were set up as sniper rifles. After the war the P14 went into storage, and many(in .30-06**) were used by the Home Guard when WWII came up(renamed the #3 MKI, MKI*, etc.). The Brits had modified the #1 MkIII design into the #4 MkI by that time, so the P14(except for sniper use until the #4 MkI(t) came out) saw little use in the second go-round; of course, they couldn't turn out enough #4 rifles either, so lots and lots of #1 rifles saw service, both older ones and new-manufactured(lots more to be found here, and I got the picture from this site).

The thing isn’t as slim and pretty as the 1903, but it makes up for that with the sights and an ungodly strong receiver; a lot of these, after the war, were rebarreled and modified for sporting rifles, many in the heaviest big-game cartridges of the day due to their strength. And I think the sights are a very big step forward over the overly-complicated rear on the Springfield and that thin, tall front blade***. And the Brits specifically noted the P14 sights were better for battlefield use than those on the #1 MkIII. Which is why the #4 MkI had them.

So, down to the noisy part: how’s it shoot?

Pretty well. The trigger on this one had a bit of creep in the second stage, breaking at a nice, light weight. The action worked smoothly, lockup was solid. It suffers from the standard 300-yard battlesight, which meant that, with the ammo used, shots at 100 yards hit six or seven inches above point of aim. The action was not as slick as the Enfields I’ve fired, probably partly because I think it saw little use. Best groups I got were about 2.5” at 100, which was partly due to ammo; some of this was older surplus that had several noticeable hangfires, so it didn’t have the best consistency. With better ammo, I think it would have done better overall. This is the same rifle I used to try the .303 cast bullet loads noted here; I'm hoping to have more chances to shoot it.

The sights are good: rear aperture for general use, and when you flip up the ladder you have a smaller aperture adjustable to way out there. Instead of a screw like the #4 it uses a spring-catch on the right to adjust the slide up and down. Running it all the way to the bottom put it just about dead-on at 100.

The weight and stock design did a fine job of making the .303 comfortable to shoot, much more comfortable than the 1903 with ball. Overall, a fine rifle. The one I fired was marked Eddystone for the manufacturer, and the bore looked virtually new; that, and the tight action mentioned, make me think it saw very little actual use. But for full GFW-politician effect the owner needs to find a bayonet.

*The #1 had one big advantage over Mauser and Springfield: that ten-shot magazine. And why the design people wanted to get rid of that, I do not know. Being too lazy to dig into it further right now, I’m guessing they decided a Mauser-style receiver would be better for the new cartridge, to explain the receiver design, and the new sight design was a fine idea; but why a smaller-capacity mag? Bean-counters worrying about the troops using too much ammo? No idea.

**Friend showed me an old movie a short time ago titled ‘Whiskey Galore’. It’s set in Britain during the war, and part of the story is centered around the local Guard commander trying to ship several cases of .303 ammo back to the mainland because he can’t get the .30-06 ammo he needs for the P14s they have until he sends the .303 back.

***I’ll repeat the saying: In WWI the Americans had the best target rifle, the Germans the best hunting rifle and the Brits the best battle rifle.

though in this area it's spotty, I'm still not heading to the range, day off or not. Thought the chance for sliding along the floor Wanted- style as you fire at multiple targets, stylishly curving bullet paths in defiance of the laws of physics, is not to be passed up lightly. Except by me. So, again, I'm looking at lots and lots of news and idiocy. Like a breakdown of the Banana Republic of New York.When you’re done reading the Blagojevich complaint, with its attendant insights into Illinois politics, spare a thought for New York — where Caroline Kennedy wants a sit-down with Governor David Paterson, with the aim of claiming Hillary Clinton’s soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat.

Is there anything wrong with that picture?Ummm, yes, there is. Besides the thought of another Kennedy demanding an official shot at running our lives.

Another piece on the 'friends of friends of the Governor' up in Caponeland. If you define 'friends' as 'other politicians and crooks(not exactly redundant, but close)with their hands in the till'.Recently, Blagojevich has been meeting with high-profile defense attorney Edward Genson, the lawyer of choice for Chicago mob figures and politicians.

And I'd like to think of the governor's brain as a wet sponge dripping with information. After a couple of hours in Genson's office, the governor's brain would be as dry as his fluffy coif. In criminal defense circles, as in political circles, information is power.That's going to be a powerful lawyer sitting in that office.

Rep. Pelosi(Socialist Appeaser-CA) is apparently telling Rahm I Didn't Have Anything To Do With Gov. Blago Emanuel how he and The Obama will behave over the next few years(assuming he's there, of course). Wonder how well that'll go over with The One?

Reason has a piece about how long it took Obama to say how terrible the mess in IL is. It includes this:This is the downside of what is best about Obama: his careful, deliberate approach to decision-making. In the normal course of events, it's far superior to the impulsive style of John McCain, which gave us Sarah Palin and "today we are all Georgians."

But Obama came to public attention because of a speech, at the 2004 Democratic convention, that showed he was capable not only of clear thought but of genuine passion. This week—in the face of a scandal involving his state, his party, and his Senate seat—that passion was absent.Well, for one thing, he hadn't had speechmakers spending weeks putting together his speech on how horrible IL is("Never mind that I've been in that pool for years, I knew nothing about this!") so he'd have a properly passionate statement. Second, hey, he did have to figure out how to say something that wouldn't piss off the Governor and all the other people he's connected to. I'll pass on the idiotic hit at Palin for now; I will point out that Obama's 'careful, deliberate' approach is at least partly based on figuring out what to say that'll serve him the best, not what he actually thinks or believes. Not as admirable as Chapman thinks it is.

Another reason why, if I had young kids and cable, Nickelodeon wouldn't be on the menu.

What was that about 'friends of friends'?Businessmen with ties to both Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson discussed raising $1 million for Blagojevich as a way of persuading him to appoint Jackson to President-elect Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat, a Chicago newspaper reports.

Ah, the wonderful tolerance of the homosexual activists on display once again:She never advertised her politics or religion in the restaurant, but last month her donation showed up on lists of "for" and "against" donors. And El Coyote became a target.

A boycott was organized on the Internet, with activists trashing El Coyote on restaurant review sites. Then came throngs of protesters, some of them shouting "shame on you" at customers. The police arrived in riot gear one night to quell the angry mob.

The mob left, but so did the customers.Because she can't be allowed to give money to the non-PC side of the question, that's just not tolerable to the activists who insist on their version of 'free speech'. And among the results:Sections of the restaurant have been closed, a manager told me Friday during a very quiet lunch hour. Some of the 89 employees, many of them gay, have had their hours cut, and layoffs are looming.Backblow sucks, doesn't it?

I've got a problem with two bits in this story:I, on the other hand, opposed Prop. 8. And as I wrote more than once, I think organized Christian religion reached new levels of hypocrisy in using the Bible to preach discrimination and promote the initiative.and"I agree with you on this," said Fred Karger. On his Californians Against Hate website, Karger has been outing Prop. 8 supporters, but he thinks Christoffersen's small personal donation didn't warrant such a backlash against El Coyote. Karger also spoke out against the resignation of a Sacramento theater director who gave $1,000 to Yes on 8 and happens to be Mormon.I would like someone to tell me how it's hypocrisy to go with what your church teaches about something. If someone believes in the Bible as written, and it says men and women shouldn't marry others of the same sex, and you stand with that, that's not 'hypocrisy', that's standing up for your beliefs, whether Mr. Lopez likes it or not.

Second, isn't it just wonderful that Karger not only 'outs' people who dared to disagree with what he wants, but he has the Solomon-like wisdom to decide who does and doesn't deserve to have their life ruined for disagreeing with him? I also like the name of his group; telling people that standing up for their beliefs means they hate other people is just guaranteed to get people to change their minds, isn't it?

Codrea finds another 'Call 911 and die' case:NEW YORK (CNN) -- Brittany Zimmerman, a 21-year-old college student who wanted to be a doctor, called 911 as she was being attacked by a stranger, police say.

But the police did not come for 48 minutes. By that time, Zimmerman was dead. Her fiance found her body.

Although the dispatcher claimed later to have heard nothing, the 911 tape captured screams, gasps and what sounds like a struggle, according to the court documents.Now, the 48 minutes was bad enough; she died during that time. But this from the police is just disgusting:Zimmerman managed to call 911 at 12:20 p.m. The call was taken by the Dane County 911 center and an internal investigation revealed the dispatcher did not hear any sounds that would signal an emergency.Now, if the 911 tape plays the sounds, just how the hell did the investigation find no sounds 'that would signal an emergency'? And, let us add, what the hell does that matter? So if you retreat to a locked bedroom and the 911 operator can't hear the guy kicking in the door, or doesn't hear you screaming as you're being stabbed, that means the call that you're being attacked, or your home broken into, isn't an emergency call?Police are still looking for her killer.

"We are working diligently on this case, have generated significant leads, and are making progress," said Joel De Spain of the Madison Police Department.Which does her dead body and her family and friends a whole hell of a lot of good.

Uncle notes a few of the oddities in the world, some of which seem to be a long way from explanation. He also notes that Bill Schneider seems to be having some buyer's remorse on The Obama. I'd read Schneider's first piece and it thoroughly pissed me off. Take the "You only care about guns, not the rest of the Bill of Rights!" bullcrap, throw in "Obama is too smart to go after the 2nd with so much other important stuff" crap. Oh, and the "we squander billions overseas to fight unwanted, unwinnable wars" hit(I guess Iraq has been the total loss that Reid and Pelosi & Co. tried to make it and we just haven't heard about it). Standard-issue "You don't have to worry about The Lightworker" bull. Except he finally took note that Obama doesn't seem to be living up to what he wanted him to be on this. Well SHAZAM!!, Mr. Journalist, and it only took you till now to take notice of what everyone worried about the 2nd(among other things) has been pointing out for a long time?Moron.

Just amazing, what all's happening out there. Or turning up, in some cases.

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at elmtreeforge at att point net

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences. - C.S. Lewis

Y'all got on this boat for different reasons, but y'all come to the same place. So now I'm asking more of you than I have before. Maybe all. Sure as I know anything, I know this - they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They'll swing back to the belief that they can make people... better. And I do not hold to that. So no more runnin'. I aim to misbehave. - Capt. Mal

A Rifleman’s Prayer:Oh Lord, I would live my life in freedom, peace and happiness, enjoying the simple pleasures of hearth and home. I would die an old, old man in my own bed, preferably of sexual overexertion.

But if that is not to be, Lord, if monsters such as this should find their way to my little corner of the world on my watch, then help me to sweep those bastards from the ramparts, because doing that is good, and right, and just.

And if in this I should fall, let me be found atop a pile of brass, behind the wall I made of their corpses. Geek with a .45

"He's Black Council,", I said.

"Or maybe stupid," Ebenezar countered.

I thought about it. "Not sure which is scarier."

Ebenezar blinked at me, then snorted. "Stupid, Hoss. Every time. Only so many blackhearted villains in the world, and they only get uppity on occasion. Stupid's everywhere, every day." Ebenezar McCoy

“A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition” ― Rudyard Kipling

This deprecation of individual freedom was objectionable to me. I am convinced now, as I was then, that man is an end because he is a child of God. Man is not made for the state; the state is made for man. To deprive man of freedom is to relegate him to the status of a thing, rather than elevate him to the status of a person. Man must never be treated as means to the end of the state; but always as an end within himself." Dr. M.L. King Jr.